Bob Poole and Privatization, Enemies of Freedom

Terri Hall founded TURF, Texans United for Reform and Freedom, to fight for the rights of all Americans. She along with other Texans had been shocked at the move to turn the highways paid for by tax payers in Texas over to corporations, to be operated for corporate profit, on a lease that would last longer than most Texans expect to live. Located in San Antonio, Terri and TURF continue their battle against the looming specter of what is variously known as the Trans Texas Corridor, the North American Union, and the Security and Prosperity Partnership. By any name this long term grab for corporate hegemony over the whole of America by foreign based corporations is simply another form of fascism. We see fascism everywhere today.

Now, TURF and Terri fight continuously just to hold on to what Americans have always believed was theirs by right. Their enemy was spawned by our own movement. America is being 'privatized' out from under Americans, sold in plain sight to foreign corporations.

There was a time when the term, 'privatization' was thought to mean a return of control to individuals. Today those who have long been involved in the Freedom Movement are learning that it is something very different. How do you react to betrayal that is decades long? What do you say when suddenly you see the logic of a line of action that you once supported? That is the question that now confronts all of us who understand that the foundation on which the Revolution stands is the sovereignty of the individual and the individual's right to exercise power over their own life. Freedom does not equal efficiency. Corporations are not individuals and have no rights.

We have been betrayed by the familiarity of those who we trusted. The reasons for that betrayal are profit and ego; they go deep into the history of our movement and even deeper into the emotional investment that those in positions of power come to feel in their own work, even when that work is revealed to be the antithesis of everything they, and we, profess to believe.

No one involved in the original Freedom Movement would have expected that one of their original heroes would be haunting the offices of state legislators in a vigorous campaign to see this naked grab for profits by corporations installed in Texas and throughout America. But that is exactly what Terri has witnessed. Over and over she heard the word, 'privatization' used to describe what she well knew was actually the corporatization of assets paid for by people like herself, hard working Americans who now would be expected to pay in perpetuity for something financed through taxes that grow ever higher.

The Security and Prosperity Partnership is one component of a larger plan by global interests. It is represented by the Bush Administration, intended to convert America into one large plantation filled with serfs. We, the serfs, are intended to be virtual slaves. There is no need for direct ownership because everything we do can be monitored and controlled by the same corporations who, through the Real ID, will own the very information that determines who we are. Under the SPP we move under the control of corporations and effectively outside of the Bill of Rights. The Real ID, reinforced by biometrics that were fraudulently sold to Congress as reliable, are the lynch pin of the plan that is now reaching its full fruition. All of this is being rapidly brought on line.

The man appointed by Governor Rick Perry, the man who coined the word, 'privatization,' and founded Reason Magazine and Reason Foundation is Robert Poole. If you have been in the movement for very long you know his name. Once, Robert Poole was admired for his work, looked up to as a hero for freedom. Today he is on the other side, opposed by the out-gunned and indomitable activists like Terri Hall. Terri, the mother of five children, is fed up with all forms of government. She also chose to home school her children. For Terri freedom is personal.

Most people who knew Bob through the last decades would not have believed this possible. But it is the voice of Bob Poole that you hear advising the frustrated Texas Senate Committee on how to evade the law after they spent the 2 – 2 ½ hours discussing the Federal prohibitions for the kind of agreement Poole urged be adopted. This happened in the afternoon of February 5^th, 2008. Terri reports that she often saw Poole talking to legislators there, working to persuade them to pass into law a measure that their constituents begged them to stop. Poole, who retired to Florida some years ago to play with his model trains, has been very busy, using the respect according him to sell fascism in Texas.

That outcry began as soon as the public learned what was being considered. The legislature reacted by hiring lobbyists, another move that was clearly proscribed by Texas law. The original law enabling the grab, HB 3588, was passed by the Texas legislature in 2003.

In Texas the legislature meets only every two years for a few months beginning on January 1^st and continuing for around four months. When the ordinary people found out there was hue and cry you could hear across the state. Immediately people like Terri became active. A new generation of freedom fighters launched their own battle. Their activism resulted in a measure, HB 792, in 2007. But according to Terri Hill that was at best a partial victory. While hundreds of thousands of Texans emailed and called to complain what was achieved was a partial moratorium, a measure that leaves Texas, and America, vulnerable today.

What Poole is promoting is called a Comprehensive Development Agreement, or CDA, a measure that, if not defeated, will result in the conversion of the entire infrastructure of government to the control of corporations, control that cannot be ended by a vote, even if such was possible given the presence of Diebold's Vote Stealing Machines. Such agreements allow corporations to control and profit from their contracts for fifty years with another fifty years available at their option.

What this provides to corporations is a safe haven for their money, money stolen from Americans that is then 'invested' through bonds that protect their ill-gotten gains for another four generations.

Bob's motivations are clear. This phase of 'privatization' is a natural extrapolation of his previous work, begun in the early 1970s with his book, “Cutting Back City Hall.” Then, we believed that freedom, not fascist profits and efficiency was the point of the exercise. Seeing the ugliness of the truth takes a special kind of courage, a courage that few possess. Over the last thirty plus years Bob has been heaped with honors, lauded and celebrated as a defender of freedom. It would take a better man than Bob Poole to acknowledge his mistake. That is why the biggest lies die last.

This is what Bob Poole has done with the trust invested in him. He either failed to see, or seeing, could not confront the contradiction lacking the courage. The failure to acknowledge mistakes when the emotional investment extends across an entire lifetime is, perhaps understandable. But it is cannot be overlooked. This is the failure to objectively see and acknowledge that drove Ignaz Simmelweiss, an obstetrician in Vienna in the middle 1800s, to infect himself with child bed fever. His fellow butcher – surgeons refused to follow his example and save lives by simply washing their hands because to do so would leave them with a monumental burden of accountability. Too many had died for them to see. Ideas are powerful. Because they are powerful those who build new institutions bear a terrible responsibility. Along with the praise and profits they must bear the consequences and shoot their own dog when it proves to be rabid, which 'privatization' has proven to be.

Poole has long been associated with those we now understand to be the architects of fascism, “Robert Poole founded the Reason Foundation in 1978, and served as its president and CEO from then until the end of 2000. He was a member of the Bush-Cheney transition team in 2000. Over the years, he has advised the Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush administrations on privatization and transportation policy.”

Next time you get a fund raising letter from Reason Magazine or Reason Foundation remember who is supporting the Trans Texas Corridor; remember to look more closely at all of the ideas they have spawned, including another Poole brain child, the right to pollute. If the idea does not return control to the individual, affirming that inherent autonomy, ask yourself who is receiving the profits.

Terri Hall and TURF will continue their fight for freedom. They must. Freedom is the one thing you do not have until you give it to everyone, now and always and they see and understand what freedom is.

Mark Lerner is going to stop the Real ID. Now.

Mark Lerner is on the road nearly every moment he can find the money. His time is spent in appointments with legislators, sitting down with them to discuss the Real ID. When Mark starts talking they are polite, but not particularly interested. They think they know what the Real ID is about. But when Mark is finished they are worried and asking questions. Mark is the whistle-blower who brought the fraud by biometrics companies to the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission only to be ignored for nearly two years before he went public. The silence from the SEC continues today. Mark is no longer silent. He is desperate to stop the Real ID because its implementation will hand over the most personal information and the biometrics of all Americans to the use of corporations and governments globally.

Americans have no idea what they are facing. Mark is determined that they be awakened to the their danger. The danger lies deep in plans long in place, from such innocuous agencies such as American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, AAMVA currently has an alliance called the DLC (Driver's License Compact) All but a few states belong to it. AAMVA recently forged a new alliance called the DLA, (Driver's License Agreement) Under the section entitled, “Jurisdiction,” within the DLA, it states that the United States, Mexico and Canada, will be under one umbrella of jurisdiction to share citizen's of each country's information contained in DMV data bases.

The Department of Homeland Security calls the AAMVA and its network, referred to as AamvaNet, the “Backbone of the Real ID Act,” meaning it is the essential system that will allow data bases to be connected and information shared. That includes all information garnered about Americans from all sources. AAMVA has introduced a new alliance between states and territories and countries. Those countries are the United States, Canada and Mexico. This is the precursor, what is needed, for the establishment of the North America Union, the Security and Prosperity Partnership.

This ties together the Trans Texas Corridor, Homeland Security, and the issuance of the Amero to replace the U. S. Dollar, along with and the most ominous branches of the United Nations with the corporations that now take for granted that their profit agenda should control the world.

“If you stop the Real ID you throw a major monkey wrench in their plans,” said Lerner for this interview. That is why Mark stays on the road talking to legislators who have been blinded by the carefully orchestrated half-information provided to them by the Real ID 'opposition' that either focuses on only one issue, for instance Cato Institute with privacy, or by those who simply cannot understand the scope of what is proposed.

Mark also spends his time in briefings with ordinary Americans and activists who come away shocked and appalled that the measure could have come so far and remained under their radar. One recent participant from a conference in California said, “I am numbed; shocked, I had no idea.”

Mark is used to that. His own participation began on the other side of the issue. Determined to do something about security in the wake of 9/11 Mark became a confident of Chairmen of the Boards, CEOs, and other senior officials in the Biometrics Industry. He learned all there is to know about the technologies and about the potential for profits that made those technologies the focus of excitement for billionaires across the globe.

Yet for Mark the focus remained not profits but security and between 2003 – 2004 he realized that for those investing it was profit and not security that was driving the testing. Over two years, he said, he realized that the technologies did not work as presented and the people involved were not to be trusted. Tests were manicured so that outcomes showing an effectiveness of 45% appeared as 90%. Alarmed and unable to get those falsifying results to stop Mark informed the SEC. He was told an investigation was underway. He waited. Then, Congress funded those same technologies.

Mark presents the documentation to anyone who questions his experience. A methodical and careful man, he kept the records, the same information he presented to the SEC.

Today he continues his battle saying that to be truly defeated the Real ID Act must be challenged and brought down simultaneously from three different directions. First, he calls on the grass roots, people, he says, must know and take action. When he speaks he asks them to tie up the phone lines of legislators who support the Real ID; to become informed on the Act, and to ensure that more people find out what is going on under the radar. Then he lays out how the Act can be challenged at the state level and federally. So, he says, “the wolf does not come back again dressed in the skin of yet another sheep.”

To date, Mark has spent four weeks giving evidence to several different committees of Congress in Washington D. C. He has spent weeks on the road, sitting down with legislators in Oklahoma, California, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Kansas, and other states. Every day he or his one occasionally paid staff person hear from activists or legislators in another state who now are beginning to realize what is really in store for Americans. A month ago the ACLU and ACLJ came together for the first time to help Mark in fighting the Real ID Act.

Typically, Mark stays at the cheapest possible hotels. Motel 6 costs less and so keeps him on the road to the next state. He eats fast food; it is cheap and filling. It is a far cry from the kinds of places he stayed while giving advice to the heads of the Biometrics Industry. Asked what others can do to help he responded for this interview, “We have a button on the site if you can spare anything to help. If you have no money we also accept frequent flyer miles.” He evidently means it. Major contributors to the effort have been few and the money tight. The money is so tight his group, Stop The Real ID Coalition, is just a blog that costs them nothing. Mark says that every penny counts.

And Mark, like the energizer bunny, just keeps going and will not stop, he says, until he has driven a spike through the heart of the Real ID because, as he said, “our freedom and the Constitution are in danger and I am an American.”

Freedom Warriors continue the Battle for the Constitution and the Soul of America

Ernie Kicks Butt in Arizona: Mark Kicks Butt in Oklahoma

We need to defeat the Real ID and we have only until May 11^th of this year to keep the states out of participation. Despite what you have heard little has been done until recently to ensure that states pass the legislation that stops the Real ID for their citizens. Now, that effort is in fast forward.

The impact of the Real ID is worse than anything you ever heard and billions in profits to the most corrupt corporations in America are riding on its implementation using biometrics. Your DNA, your eye scan, your finger prints and your medical records will become, effectively, the property of not just one government agency but all agencies, American and global. More, they will be sold to corporations. Go to the site for Stop the Real ID Coalition . This is a threat Americans need to understand.

You did not hear about this for the same reason Congress didn't. The details were buried in the footnotes.

The fast forward for stopping the Real ID comes in the form of a very small group of determined individuals.

Mark Lerner, the founder of Real ID Coalition, is doing a great job getting states to pass the needed legislation barring their participation. We need 20 states to ensure it cannot be carried out. Mark is now working his way through the state legislatures and they are finally finding out the truth and passing the needed legislation. Mark and the coalition people are straight ahead kind of folks and their information is right on and factual. Homeland Insecurity hates that.

You can help. The first way is to donate, and we really need the money first just to keep Mark on the road and second to pay for security. You will see why in a moment. You can also replicate the actions of Freedom Man himself, Ernie Hancock who, as always, took his own kind of action.

Ernie had tickets for not properly recycling printed up. These looked like the real thing; lots of check off boxes with the infractions of the recipient clearly noted. But the phone number went to a newspaper in Phoenix. 40 of the tickets were placed on trashcans. That paper changed its phone number. The url on the ticket took you to a very special and entirely accurate site, Arizona Tip Hotline. Ernie wonders what would have happened if they had used more than 40 of the tickets. He has thousands and Ernie has not yet begun to make the powers that be in Arizona unhappy.

The phones at city hall lit up and have stayed lit. The people are starting to understand the Real ID. Now we need to get the model legislation written by Mark to those in the Arizona legislature. We also need to get Mark there to hammer home the message in the language legislators best understand.

Ernie gets the attention of the public and the establishment; Mark bats clean up, pulling the state back from the edge of fascism towards freedom.

Today in Oklahoma Mark finished his presentation to various state senators and left. Fifteen minutes later an outraged representative of Homeland Insecurity, reportedly very highly placed, whatever that means, raged into the office of the senator who is sponsoring the bill and demanded that it be defeated and that the Real ID be accepted. Or Else. It seems that the powers that be really, really, want to Real ID. The guy probably bought stock in biometrics.

So tomorrow morning Mark will be meeting this same puffed up bureaucrat for the best two falls out of three before he addresses the whole Senate at 9am. It is amazing how important these adherents to the Uniform Fascism Theory think they are. Stay tuned for more developments.

Ernie said he would be delighted to have you use the full content of his innovative and informative site for your state. This is especially effective in the capitol in the weeks before Mark arrives. This is cheap and will get the panties of the Federal Homeland Insecurity establishment in a knot. Nothing flusters Mark, he is determined.

Ernie is sending me the jpeg for the ticket and I will send it on after this email so you have all that is necessary. I will also post it on my blogsite, How the NeoCons Stole Freedom.

The authorities know exactly who Ernie is and they just groan. Even Homeland Insecurity is scared of Ernie. You could get that kind of reputation, too. Sometimes the Revolution is more fun than is legal today and this is one of those times.

Get Revolutionary. Stop the Real ID in your state!